f maritime web

On 17 June Cobelfret’s newly built ‘Masarine’s’ Christening took place in Dublin Port. She is one of six sister

ships employed by the Cobelfret Group. With three kilometres of truck lanes, the vessel can carry 360 trucks and containers on double stacked cassett es. Th e series of vessels are being built by Flensburger Schiffb au Gesellschaft . Normal operating speed is 18 knots.

Th e ‘Masarine’ will join one of her sister ships on the twice weekly Dublin to Rott erdam and to Zeebrugge routes giving a total capacity in each direction of just under 12 kilometres. Prior to moving to Dublin in September 2009, the Line operated a single 2300 lane metres vessel each week.

At the Christening, CEO of CLdN – Cobelfret’s parent Company, Christian Cigrang said: “We are delighted to be expanding our services from Dublin Port. Today’s ceremony marks an investment of €48 million and demonstrates our commitment to providing our customers with a reliable, direct service to and from continental Europe and the heart of Dublin City.

Cobelfret also services Esbjerg, Denmark

and Gothenburg, Sweden from Zeebrugge, while local Irish Agent for Transfennica, Celtic Forwarding uses the Cobelfret service from

Dublin to feed traffi c through the Zeebrugge terminal onto the Transfennica services to Bilbao and to Finland.

Cobelfret bring new Ferry to Dublin for Christening

fl eetMaritime: IRISH SHIPPING & FREIGHTMARITIME I

Volume 5, No. 3 Summer 2010

Compiled by Howard Knott Edited by Jarlath Sweeneyemail: maritime@fl eet.ie

62 FLEETTRANSPORT | JUL/AUG 10

IEA slams An Bord Pleanála decision on Dublin Port

An Bord Pleanála issued its decision to refuse the development of 21 hectares at Dublin Port on 9 June. In a statement,

the Irish Exporters Association (IEA) said that the decision to refuse this development showed a worrying lack of understanding of the economic needs of exporters as we try to emerge from recession. Th is decision, according to the Association, follows a patt ern of deplorably poor decision making when it comes to major infrastructural projects.

“There is a need to invest in basic Port infrastructure such as dredging and deepwater Quays ahead of demand. In most other European Countries, the state undertakes this critical investment in the Ports, in much the same way as they do for the road and the rail networks. In Ireland there appears to be a blind spot when it comes to Port investment. In the 2000-2006 National Development Plan (NDP), €180

million was allocated for Port Development but only €80 million of that was actually spent. In the subsequent NDP, not a single Euro was allocated.

John Whelan, CEO of the IEA concluded: “major infrastructural decisions of National importance, such as the Dublin Port 21 hectare development, should not be left in the hands of An Bord Pleanála. We now ask that the major infrastructure Task Force take over the application and over-rule this bad decision and favour this necessary development proceeding in the National interest.”

In January this year Enda Connellan announced his intended retirement from the position of CEO at Dublin Port. He had overseen major developments and rationalisations at the Port where he has served as Harbour Master prior to taking on the CEO role. Lucy McCaff rey, Chairperson of the Dublin Port Company has now announced the appointment of Eamonn O’Reilly (pictured) as CEO to replace Enda Connellan from early August 2010.

MIKE MURPHY INSURANCE GROUPThe Insurance Centre, 7 Sandyford Business Centre, Sandyford, Dublin 18.

We are over 35 years working for the Haulage Industry.Just call us for a quote! Tel: 01 2932350 Fax: 01 2932360

Email: [email protected] Web: www.mikemurphyinsurance.ieM.Murphy Insurance Services Ltd. is a member of IBA and regulated by the Financial Regulator.

MARITIME II

FLEETTRANSPORT | JUL/AUG 10 63

Following the publication of a report commissioned by the Wexford County Development Board entitled, ‘Positioning

Wexford for the upturn’ and writt en by Julie O’Neill, former Secretary General of the Department of Transport, local company, Tuskar Rock Marine has come up with detailed proposals on how Rosslare Port might be made into Ireland’s Off shore Wind Energy hub.

In the course of the report O’Neill states: “the local community in Wexford, including the business sector and the Local Authority are acutely aware of the strategic importance of Rosslare Europort to the economy of Wexford and the South-East.”

“Th e challenges are to ensure that Rosslare Europort is strengthened as a key element in the infrastructure of the County, its hinterland is

developed to the benefi t of the logistics sector and the wider local economy.”

She goes on to state, “In this context it is worth noting that the IMDO has recently been asked by SEAI (Sustainable Energy Authority Ireland) to recruit a consultant to assess what ports might be best placed, in terms of their hinterland structure, to take on the on-shore construction of off -shore wind farms.”

David Kinsella, Managing Director of Tuskar Rock Marine has drawn up a work programme for moving Rosslare from being primarily a Ferry Port to one that combines that activity with building and servicing wind turbines and providing an extensive leisure boat Marina. Th e facility would be built on 250 acres of reclaimed Quayside land.

Crucial to turning this plan into a reality would be the designation by the Irish Government of Rosslare as the centre of excellence for the off shore wind energy industry in Ireland. He points out that current plans by wind energy companies show that 878 MW Irish Sea based generation fi gure for 2010 increasing to almost 30,000 megawatt s by 2030. Th e speed of growth can be gauged by the 71% in the last year alone. Th is is putt ing severe pressure on suppliers to the industry to upscale their business – an example would be the building of support vessels where there would be an annual requirement of 100 craft but current building capacity of fi ft een or less.

The Port of Cork Company carried out a strategic review of its development options following the decision in

2008 by An Bord Pleanala to turn down the planned ‘Oyster Bank’ site development in the Harbour.

Th e review concluded that:A new container terminal would best • be located on Port lands adjacent to the Ringaskiddy Ferry Terminal.Bulk operations would primarily be located • at the Ringaskiddy Deep Water Berth and at the adjacent ADM pier locations.A supplementary site for bulk/general cargo • could be located at Marino Point, previously the location of the IFI fertilizer factory.Th e Marino Point site, if acquired also has • the potential to accommodate Bulk Liquids trade and would be fully rail connected.

In summarising the review outcome Port CEO, Brendan Keating said: “Th e fi ndings re-iterate the Port of Cork’s commitment to ensuring that

Cork remains a world class Port with a sustainable and economically viable future in supporting and serving the economic competitiveness and sustainability needs of Cork, its regional economy and hinterland.”

Regional Development Minister, Conor Murphy, MLA, has offi cially opened a new deepwater Quay at Warrenpoint.

The Quay and associated civil works cost £12.6 million and is part of a redevelopment of Warrenpoint Harbour costing £22 million, of which the Government grant is £16.5 million.

Th e new facility will enable vessels of up to 10,000 tonnes to be handled alongside and complements the new Ro-Ro facilities developed in 2009. Warrenpoint is now the second busiest Port in Northern Ireland and the fi ft h busiest in Ireland.

Cardiff Container Lines has now extended their twice weekly Lo-Lo service linking Cardiff with Dublin to provide two sailings to Warrenpoint. Overall business levels at the County Down Port were steady in 2009 and have begun to grow again in 2010, boosted by the renewed importation of building materials.

Rosslare to become Ireland’s offshore Wind Energy hub?

Cork Port plans to relocate Container handing to Ringaskiddy site

Warrenpoint Ports new Deepwater Quay secures extra traffi c

Mike Wood has been appointed General Manager (UK) of the new Swansea to Cork Fastnet Line car ferry service. Th e service, which commenced operation in March this year, provides an overnight service to Cork six days a week that shaves 370 miles off alternative surface routes to South West Ireland.

Previously Commercial Director for Greatdays Wholesale Travel, Mike has over 18 years experience in the ferry industry. In addition to working as Sales and Marketing Director at Fjordline Ferries for eight years, where he was responsible for the Newcastle to Norway route, Mike has also worked for Color Line and Fred Olsen ferries.

Mike’s key priorities are to raise public awareness of Fastnet Line’s service to Ireland and ensure that it operates the new Swansea to Cork route profi tably by focussing on its pricing, yield and margins.

Fastnet Line Fastnet Line AppointmentAppointment




Speaking at the Ro-Ro 2010 Conference in Bremen and aft er the service launch of Stena Lines’ largest ferry

the ‘Stena Hollandica’ serving the Harwich – Hook of Holland route, Stena Ro-Ro CEO, Bo Severed said that he believed that there is no future for high-speed intra-Europe Ro-Ro services. “Th ey use a lot of power and the consumption of oil can easily double just to achieve an extra one or two knots.” He went on to say that conventional vessels currently steaming at 14 to 16 knots would, as business picks up, return to an 18 knot cruising speed.

Going on to speak about the ‘Stena Hollandica’ he said that the diff erence

between this vessel and its predecessor in energy effi ciency and operating expenses, fully justifi ed

the new investment. Th e new vessel has lane metre length of 5,500 kilometres, spread over

4 decks and a passenger capacity of 1200, enabling her to exploit the commercial opportunities following the Volcanic Ash boost to sea travel. She will be joined later in the year by a sister vessel ‘Stena Britannica’.

Stena has also entered a space charter agreement with DFDS on the Esbjerg – Immingham/Harwich routes. Th is arises from a condition set by the European Commission in its approval of the takeover by DFDS of the Norfolk Line Ro-Ro business.

Stena sees High-Speed Ferries as being consigned to history

MARITIME III

64 FLEETTRANSPORT | JUL/AUG 10

Transland is fi rst mover with low-cost on-line service for pallets

Transland Group, has just launched a new Special Off ers on-line facility for palletised freight, the fi rst of its kind

in the transport industry.

Customers can now avail of highly discounted rates on-line if they book early and pre-pay for consignments by credit card. On-line rates can be up to 50% less than market rates.

Kieran Conlon, Managing Director, explains why he chose to implement this strategy, “Our objective was to balance the capacity on all our routes. We were fi nding an imbalance of capacity on backloads, particularly on the Ireland-UK route. To address this imbalance, we came up with a model that would allow us to sell this space

continuously at greatly reduced rates. We have since scaled back our costs on all routes to provide this facility on all our UK and Irish services, and the reduction in administration costs aff orded by

the on-line facility helps to further drive down on-line costs.”

As well as fi nding discounted rates, customers can book consignments on-line, track their shipments and access POD’s through the website as soon as delivery has been completed. In this way, customers have more control over their freight.

At the start of 2010 Transland was appointed Republic of Ireland member for Palletways, the UK’s largest pallet network. This partnership enables Transland to expand its distribution portfolio to mainland Europe, and the website will soon off er discounted rates to and from European countries.

SE A SHORTS - L E I S U R ESE A SHORTS - L E I S U R ERestoration of Th e Royal Canal has been completed and the 146 kilometre waterway linking Dublin Port with Cloondara, west of Longford will be re-opening in September. Th e canal, which is under the management of Waterways Ireland has a population within its catchment area of over 1.2 million people and is one of the largest public amenities on the island.

Completion of the work will enable tourist craft to complete a circular route from Dublin heading north-west on the Royal Canal, then south on the River Shannon, past Athlone, then

east on the Grand Canal back to Dublin. It is expected that this major improvement in the inland waterways network will signifi cantly boost Irish marine tourism.

Belfast Harbour has opened the fi rst phase of its leisure craft Marina located in the Titanic Quarter, close to the City Centre and will, when fully complete have accommodation for up to 200 craft .

Cork Port has opened its City Marina which will facilitate visiting boats giving secure access to the City Centre. On 7 and 8 July the Port will welcome the Clipper Round the World Race fl eet at the new Marina.

Rosslare Europort, a 60ft twice veteran of the Vendee Globe Ocean Race, led the 37 boat fl eet over the start line at Wicklow for the 2010 Conway Media Round Ireland Yacht Race. Support Sponsors of Rosslare Europort, the largest yacht in the fl eet are Irish Ferries and Stena Line, the major operators through the County Wexford Port.




MARITIME IV

FLEETTRANSPORT | JUL/AUG 10 65

Irish Sea Lines pioneered super trailers

The Three masted Guinness Ship

As a part of its celebrations of its 50th anniversary the Alliance Francaise has organised a crossing by the three masted

Sailing Ship ‘Belem’ from Roscoff to Dublin where she is due to arrive alongside the Dublin South Quays. On board will be 48 trainees of which 14 will be Irish.

Th e steel hulled ‘Belem’ was launched in 1896 and got her name from the Brazilian Port to which she would trade for her French owner until she was sold in 1914 to the Duke of Westminster and she was converted into one of the largest private yachts afl oat.

In 1921 she was bought by Sir Arthur Ernest Guinness. He re-christened her ‘Fantome II’ and fi tt ed her out for cruising too, literally, all corners of the world. A key piece of equipment installed by Guinness in his offi ce on board was a telegraph machine. Using this, Guinness was able to manage his Dublin based brewing business on a daily basis from anywhere.

His voyages included one to the Arctic in 1922 and a year later he took his family and friends on a sea voyage around the World. Th ey crossed the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal, to China, Tahiti and India, before entering the Suez Canal and heading home. Th e 31,129 nautical mile circumnavigation took Guinness a litt le less than a year.

During World War II ‘Fantome II’ was laid up at the Isle of Wight and was used as headquarters for the Free French Forces. She took to the sea again in 1947 for a few cruises to Ireland. By 1951 Sir Ernest Guinness had died and she was sold into Italian ownership. Th ere she took on a Sail training Ship role. During the 1980’s, her original name restored, she was completely renovated by her new French owners and she is now France’s only remaining three masted barque and a well used Sail training Ship.

Her return to Dublin is planned for 13 July just in time for the Bastille Day celebrations.

P & O Line in May this year brought its long serving veteran now sailing under the name ‘Norcape’ back onto their Dublin service

displacing the chartered and much smaller ‘Celtic Star’. Th e 1500 lane metres Ro-Ro vessel had been delivered from a Japanese yard in 1979 to sail as the ‘Tipperary’ for the B + I Line in a joint service with the P & O Company, Pandoro and alongside her near sister vessel ‘Ibex’. Th e new vessels operated a twice daily Dublin to Fleetwood service displacing the 1975 buildings ‘Bison’ and ‘Buff alo’ which had operated the service since its inception. P & O operated a similar service linking Larne and Fleetwood until 2004 when the route was taken over by Stena Line and both of these vessels are still operating on that service.

While a number of the earlier post World War II Ro-Ro ships were freight only vessels, almost all the ‘second generation’ ferries were built mainly for the passenger and car traffi c with freight traffi c being given low priority, except, perhaps, during the Winter months when passenger traffi c was sparse. B + I Line, during the 1960s built a brand new fl eet (of car ferries), mainly at Verolme Cork Dockyard. Th ese vessels had limited garage space, less than 500 lane metres and they were not well suited for the carriage of larger units nor for unaccompanied trailers. Part of the problem with such units was the time that loading and discharge took at the Ports where in Liverpool, for example, the ramps being used were not suitable for manoeuvring such equipment. Th e

fi rst B + I Line Car Ferry, the German built M.V. Munster was timetabled initially to operate one and a half round trips each day between Dublin and Liverpool, a six to seven hour voyage in good conditions.

Th e Line commissioned a ‘freight only’ vessel at the Cork yard and the M.V. Dundalk was delivered in 1975, but her cargo space was limited and she never ran for the company. She spent most of her career in Stena Line service.

Th e ‘Buff alo’ and the ‘Bison’ had three times the space that ‘Dundalk’ had and were ideally designed to take unaccompanied trailers. Furthermore, in launching the new Fleetwood service the lines broke with the normal operational patt ern for Ro-Ro services, by building a large fl eet of high cube box van trailers and of 40ft Flat trailers. In doing this the Lines were adopting a similar approach to the Lift On-Lift Off container carriers. Th ey off ered door-to-door services throughout these islands, but also allowed hauliers and forwarders to use their equipment to put together their own door to door services. From the Lines’ point of view the big advantages of such systems were that they tied the customers to using their services and that the trailer fl eet using the vessels was of consistent quality and trailer size. For the shipper and particularly the Groupage service operator the Box Vans were larger than any other equipment available and well suited to stuffi ng in

the maximum amount of cargo. Where all of the cargo would not fi t into the booked trailer, the groupage company could load the surplus into the B + I Line groupage trailer that was loaded at the terminal. It was probably no coincidence that these services took off at the time that the haulage industry licensing regime in Ireland was liberated, following that in Britain.

Th e Dublin – Fleetwood service operated until 1998. By then the Box Van trailer had largely been displaced by the Tautliner and hauliers and forwarders were running their own fl eets, thus giving themselves fl exibility as to their routes and allowing them to go through to the continent. Following the withdrawal of the Fleetwood services, much of the Flat trailer fl eet was retained by P & O (Irish Sea) Ltd. And the ‘Ibex’ became its ‘European Envoy’ running on a Dublin to Liverpool service. In addition to shippers own trailers that service continues to carry Lo-Lo containers, mainly those that connect with deep-sea vessels at UK Ports and load them onto the 40ft Flat trailers at Dublin Port.

Th e introduction of the B+I Line/ Pandoro Box Van changed the thrust of Irish Sea freight movement from shipment of cargo in containers on Lo-Lo ships to the highly effi cient Ro-Ro system that continues to dominate the market today.

Belem © JEAN-CHRISTOPHE L’ESPAGNOL




f maritime web

Documents